Movie review: "Brave" is awesome, and not just because all the heroes are grrrls [also, spoiler alert]
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When asked what he thought of the movie, my eight-year-old nephew said: It was awesome!
He's right, it is awesome.
Note to movie-makers: I was saying just recently that the Harry Potter stories would have been just as good if they'd been the Hermione Granger stories instead and now you have another data point - yes, boys do like movies where the hero is a grrrl.
Note to self: thank brother for not raising his kid to be a sexist jerk.
Note to parents: According to the official Disney website for Brave, the movie is rated PG, for some scary action and rude humor. For "rude humor" read "insulting sexist bit that could have been left out and thankfully nobody in the audience laughed anyway." As for scary action, they're not kidding. There's one scene near the very beginning where some of the kids in the audience started crying, and there were one or two more where my little nephew muttered in a small worried voice, "this is creepy" [he was right]. Fortunately, the action moves along quickly and especially the outcome of that early scene, we find out almost immediately, is not nearly so bad as it looked at first.
The animation is superb, and the story is pretty good too. There are castles and magic spells and warring clans and epic battles and all the characters speak with a Scottish accent [the tale is set in medieval Scotland, after all], and did I mention that all the heroes are grrrls? Also, the beautiful princess is an accomplished rock climber and archer, and her horse is her best friend and companion on many of her adventures.
And does the beautiful princess marry the handsome prince and live happily ever after?
[spoiler below the fold, stop reading now if you don't want to know]
No, she does not - for which the makers of this movie are to be highly praised. And yet, everyone lives happily ever after anyway!
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Comments
That's not very much of a spoiler!
What happens?!
That's not very much of a
That's not very much of a spoiler!
not to you, maybe.
What happens?!
they all lived happily ever after! for more detail, you'll have to watch the movie.
Hallelujah!
I'm happy to hear storytelling is evolving beyond 'find a prince to marry and everything will be fine' nonsense.
Plus, on a personal and more superficial note, what a thrill to see a heroine with curly hair -- about freaking time!
:)
i'm really really really happy about the evolution too.
and i'm glad you got a bonus happy out of it!
Pixar will be delighted you noticed
Because that curly red hair was really, REALLY hard to do. Pixar thought they had the best hair rendering routines in the world ever since the one they invented for Monsters but it couldn't do the big red hair in Brave. I have half a mind to go see the movie just to see how it looks on the big screen.
they did an excellent job
i once spent days and days trying to do a close-up rendering of polar bear fur in photoshop, a simple task in comparison, i would think.
Goodness yes!
Animated big hair has to bounce and fly in the wind. Wired Magazine did a neat story of how it was done.
thanks for that link!
they did a really good job with her hair, and from the description of how taz works, i can see why.
i was also geeking out over the archery during the movie. i'm not the only one, i see.
That guy did all kinds of cool analysis
On all the big archery movies this past year.
Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss was great and had great form he said, but Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye sucked(while disappointing, not surprising from the director that thought 19th century revolvers would make good laser pistols).
So today my ex-coworker swung by the office
With two of her kids in tow, wasting a few minutes before their showtime to say hi.
When asked what they were going to see, she said she didn't know. I suggested Brave, to which she responded, "Oh, but I don't think he'd like it," referring to her son.
*Beats head against gender essentialist walls*
I mean how are we supposed to teach boys that girls are human too when we continue to insist that boys can't connect with girls' stories!!!
Which might have been a reason I wanted to know...
... more of the story.
But no!
shorter lambert:
"how am i supposed to know ahead of time if this grrrl story is going to have enough non-grrrl stuff in it to over-come the grrrl stuff?"
what part of
castles and magic spells and warring clans and epic battles and medieval Scotland and rock climbing and archery and adventures on horseback failed to pique your interest?
although, to be fair, i should really have said epic battles between the forces of good and evil.
Ah, c'mon :)
I think Lambert's question was an innocent one, trying to draw out more information.
He is a gracious host, and not a testosterone crazed sexist. Of course, I've never met him in person. ;)
And, a bit off the point but not, he did ban that cartoon guy for his sexist cartoons, which even one woman found funny. I was not that one woman, btw.
there's blatant
there's blatant testosterone-crazed misogyny and then there's the more subliminal cultural narrative that has been forever and ever subtly insinuated into all our heads that stories with grrrl heroes, however well told and whatever the plot, somehow just aren't quite . . . right.
lambert is most demonstrably NOT in the first category, but as aeryl's comment above shows, a noticeable portion of the population, be they male or female, fall into the second category.
Yes, and?
Not going to spend the money to go to this or any other movie, so if any other readers, of whichever sex and/or gender and/or pervasively and subtly fuckity-fucked up-age and -ness that -- as we see, all too often, goes with being human and having had a life, however regrettable, or not -- are curious about the plot then they'll just have to fucking do without to prove the point.
Dear lord.
plot plot plot plot plot plot
plot plot plot plot plot plot plot
it's actually a bunch of intertwined plots and subplots, each of which ends up getting short shrift, so the story kind of alternately bobbles and leaps along. if you have lofty literary standards for the plot any story, book, movie, or song, you'll hate it. don't go.
but some of the scenes are riveting, many of the characters are engaging, the princess defies all the princess stereotypes [thus saving the kingdom from itself], the scenery is lush, and the animation is pretty darn good. i tuned out much of the background music [i have hearing issues], but the internets have informed me that it's a decent fusion of authentic scottish music of the time with whatever appeals to modern movie audiences.
i like this guy's take, and it pretty accurately sums of one of the plot lines:
wikipedia and a number of advance reviewers have made much of the fact that it's a mother-daughter relationship story. it's true that the princess rebels against her mother, and it's true that the princess and the queen later spend a lot of the story's timeline in each other's company, and it's true that in the end they heal the rift between them, but a significant portion of that time is actually more of the two-buddies-together-on-a-quest (or adventure) plot type.
kids are mostly going to like the movie, and the bonus for feminism is that they don't seem to mind at all that the heroes are grrrls. in fact, they may even grow up thinking that it's normal for grrrls to be heroes.
adults who don't like the movie will in many cases dislike it because of the jumbled plotlines and in some of those cases will come away thinking they dislike the movie because the heroes are all grrrls.
Those are very interesting classifications
Does the non- or perhaps multi-linear nature of the plotting relate to or reinforce the theme? Or is it genuinely jumbled?
Bad Guy Dies But By Accident
Can I say that this is why I love the Last Airbender and Legend of Korra series, is that these shows actually have the characters sturggle with these things(especially Korra which *SPOILER* wrapped its season one plotline with an explosive murder suicide, ON A KIDS SHOW!!).
wow
though i'm glad i wasn't faced with discussing anything like with an eight year old this time around.
It was very moving
Believe it or not.
If you haven't watched it yet, get thee to Nick.com
Well, I'm not sure that "innocent question" is a category...
... that I'd accept.
Basically, I claim to be a reasonably fair-minded moderator. Any such person would have ended up banning Flugelnock in this community. This isn't 4Chan, for pity's sake.
Geez!
It's easy to get in trouble around here!
definitions
See #7- Not intended to cause harm or offense
And, note I was speaking specifically about your question "what happens". Or, my interpretation thereof. I thought it was an innocent question, as per above.
But, I certainly will tiptoe around that in future!
Part of the reason I thought it was an "innocent question" (see meaning above) is that 1) I thought it very unlikely that you would go see the movie, because you've never given any indication that you spend time in movie theaters and 2) given the book thread, I suspected that the topic is not something that fascinates you.
As for moderation, you are going meta on me here. Of course you are a fair-minded moderator! I don't know what 4Chan is. And, I didn't mean to imply that you wouldn't have banned the comix guy had you not been bombarded by negative comments. He was a novelty at the time, and it took a bit of time to let him run on before it was absolutely clear that he was a .... (insert appropriate word).
I've been a moderator, albeit in a lesser capacity, and then took the view that I would wait for the person to unequivocally hang himself (so to speak) in public, so as not to be pre-emptive or personal about it.
You mean what am I asking about beyond genre elements?
Er, the question I asked:
Quoting wikipedia from sheer laziness:
Dunno. Maybe genre elements like castles and swords create dramatic tension in some viewers. They don't for me.
Sure, feel free to put words in my mouth
I can take it!
*Beats head against gender
*Beats head against gender essentialist walls*
i hear ya!
roger ebert, gender essentialist
Oh my!
It's almost beautiful in the purity of its wrong-headedness.
you are beginning to see the
you are beginning to see the light, grasshopper
Hardly subliminal!
So, no. Doesn't back up the original claim, which has oodles of evidence, certainly, but not this evidence.
My wife BRAVEly went
With our son. She fell asleep. I understand he liked it, and that there were about 40 minutes of trailers and even a mini-movie before the actual movie. It was also packed and they had to sit in the front row.
I know, this is a terrible non-review movie review. Sorry.
lol!
yep, far too many trailers, and i kind of liked the mini-movie, in an artsy sorta way. we weren't going to get up and walk out, but it'll be a long time before i go to a movie in a theater again. i should also probably mention that the last movie i saw in a theater was schindler's list.
sitting in the front row sucks. we got there late hoping to avoid some of the trailers and ended up in the front [and still saw too many trailers. ugh]. we did eventually get up and spend part of that time roaming the theater looking for better seats, and did finally find some, in time for the real movie too.
The mini movie is standard before any Pixar movie
Because without the shorts we would have no Pixar(have you ever seen the one with the baby lamp and zie's momma? OMG SO CUTE!!!).
it used to be cartoons, or
it used to be cartoons, or even farther back in the day, newsreels before the movie, any movie, in a theater. a good idea, but after sitting through so many trailers first it was kind of exasperating. i can see why people wait for the dvd to come out instead of going to the movies [which is the only way i've seen any other pixar movies, so i guess i've missed all the mini-movies].